Birthday
by KUG
Summary: Five years have passed, and it's Donnie's birthday. He wants to share it with those who have passed on, and it's hard for him to face his grief again. TMNT 2003, SAINW. Rated T just because. (cover art does not belong to me)


**Please note! This is a SAINW TMNT 2k3 oneshot. Please don't ask questions, because I honestly don't know where this story came from (muses are strange). (SAINW is the abbreviation for Same As It Never Was, for those of you who don't know. It is an emotionally crippling episode in which all the turtles [except for Don] live in a horrible future. They all die horrible deaths. Most of the fandom have a love-hate relationship with the episode [go figure].)**

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The forest is chilly this time of the year, but not quite as dark as it used to be.

Donnie settles himself into a kneeling position on the cold dirt. It gets between his toes and rubs against his skin, rough and full of pebbles, but he doesn't particularly notice. His eyes are on the four wooden grave markers sticking up from little mounds of old dirt.

One of them is old, with moss growing on the corner, so sun-bleached and scoured by the wind that the letters are hard to make out. The wood crumbles away on one edge.

The other three are relatively new, the wood still warm with color and the names not yet faded.

Not that Donnie will _ever_ let them fade.

Slowly a smile quirks at the corner of his mouth. Brown eyes fluttering guiltily between the grave markers and the cake in his hand, he speaks up.

"Happy fiftieth you guys." For a moment his voice cracks, dusty from the long walk here, and he clears his throat. "I'm, uh, I'm not the best baker, and I could only find three candles." Gently, he sets the sets the cake down and lights the candles. One of them lurches at a crazy angle and he rights it with a finger.

"It seemed appropriate so..." Trailing off, his eyes fall away from the markers, beginning to glimmer with moisture.

A light breeze flutters the trailing ends of his purple bandana, and a solitary bird chirps far away.

Clearing his throat again, he continues, "I'm turning twenty today. I always thought that it would be with you guys, y'know, with cake and maybe some balloons. Maybe even some presents." The effort of speaking is getting harder with each word, and his voice trembles as each syllable manages to get out.

In the past years, Don has gotten better at containing his emotions, but right now the guilt and grief are breaking through the dam he has carefully erected.

After sucking in a shaking breath, he goes on. "I... I don't even know what to say anymore. Only..."

And now the dam bursts open.

"I'm sorry!" he sobs, the tears streaming from his anguished brown eyes and dripping from his chin. "I wonder why I even bother living at all. I just... I miss you too much!"

Heartbroken sobs quake through his broad shoulders and make their way to his trembling hands. Slowly sinking down, he huddles on the dirt, crying like a child. The candles on the cake burn lower; the odd one tilts drunkenly again.

But by the time they have burned out, Donnie is finished. Straightening, he puts his shoulders back and takes steadying breaths.

"I'll stay with you for a while. April needs me badly for the cleanup; you wouldn't believe how much progress we still have to make, even after five years. She only let me off because she knew it was my birthday."

He shifts, sitting cross-legged beside the graves.

It is chilly this time of year. But Donnie isn't planning on going anywhere for a while. He'll stay with them. Because, after all, it _is_ their birthday.

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**Oh my gosh, I was crying a little while I wrote this. :'(**

**I know, after a long hiatus, I randomly show up again with a TMNT 2k3 fic. However, I hope that those of you who read this enjoyed it, despite the completely stupid way I wrote it. (I actually wrote it for no reason, complete out of the blue. Came up with it on the spot.) **

**Also: do not judge me! XD I may be a seventeen year old who takes college classes (just for the summer but still), but TMNT 2k3 was my childhood. I watched it every Saturday and loved it, even though I was six when it came out and I probably couldn't understand most of it. Recently I rewatched the entire series (courtesy of YouTube) and fell in love with it again.**


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